Saturday, May 30, 2015

4-20-15

Walter is hittn the big leagues! I like the Justin Bieber/Macklemore cut that your rockn now! haha. It looks good really.

I actually sold my bike a few weeks ago, sorry I didnt tell you. I was planning on giving the money back to Grandpa. I havent gotten the money yet, all the stuff has to go through the office first.

So I have a few boxes that Im still packing so I dont have the wieght yet, but I can give you the dimensions if you want them now.

So this week we picked up a new investigator. His name is Emilio and he is a friend of one of the returned missionaries in the branch. He is an ex marine, big guy, all tatted up and looks pretty intimidating, but he is one of the chillest guys you could ever meet. We taugh him the first lesson and ivited him to be baptized in the next few coming weeks and he accepted! And he actually asked if we could start meeting with him on a regular basis. So that was a super good start to the week.

We taught another one of our investigators from the YSA, named Liz, about the Plan of Salvation. I was able to make a pretty good visual aid on the chalk laying out the whole Plan of Happiness, thanks to my drawing skills. It went very well, she was super excited about it and is still rolling towards the 26th for her baptism.

I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Waechtler in Cole Canyon last week. It was cool serving in a past area with one of my past companions being able to see old faces again from over a year ago. I saw Garrett Smedley and man has he grown! ( the members son who we lived with for 6 months last time I was in Murrieta.) Hes almost like a younger brother to me, so it was almost like seeing one of my own siblings after a year and a half. We picked up two new investigators in their ward, a mother and a daughter. (the daughter is actually dating a guy who is on a mission right now.) They were both going through a rough time so we were able to give them both blessings. It was a pretty spiritual experience for us and for them. They are super excited to learn more about the gospel.

After we exchanged back we saw some kids skateboarding at the church, I never let an oppurtunity like that pass me up, so we decided to go talk to them. When they saw us they stopped skating and tried to act all innoccent and thought we were going to chew them out and tell them to leave, it was pretty funny. But I showed them a few tricks and actually played them in a game of sk8 it was awesome! How we usually do it when we run into skaters is I take care of the skating aspect of the contact and whoever my comp is invites them to learn more. We found out that one of them is actually a less active member and his brother actually just got back from a mission in Italy! Talk about being in the right place at the right time. non of the others guys wanted to learn more and they kindly declined our offer, but a seed was planted for sure and a good reminder that that kid should go on a mission like his brother one day.

We had stake conference this past sunday and one of the speakers shared a poem that I like a lot. It is called " the Charge of the Light Brigade". It talks about a British light cavalry unit going straight into the front lines of battle against the Russian army in the mid 1800s. I love the second and third stanzas of the poem.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

Today there is so much turmoil and darkness in the world that are being shot at us from all angles. But there is hope and strength knowing that we are on the winning side and that our captain is the Savior Himself. We need to face adversity, temptation and, hardship with strength, bravery, and courage just like the light brigade did when they went into their own valley of death.